Vera Miles is Millicent Barnes a young woman waiting in a bus station. Her bus is late but when she goes up to the dispatcher to ask when the bus would arrive he criticizes her for repeatedly bothering him about the bus. Additionally, her suitcase keeps moving back and forth from her possession to the checked in area. Then she catches sight of herself across the room in a mirror and has a minor breakdown.
A young man named Paul tries to calm her down and agrees to keep her company on her trip but when she looks into the bus, she sees herself sitting on the bus. She faints and Paul carries her back to the bench. When she comes to, she tells Paul that she thinks that she has a doppelganger that has crossed over from a parallel dimension and is trying to replace her. He tries to convince her that there must have been some reasonable explanation for what she saw but she is convinced of her explanation. Paul calls the police and tells them there is a woman who is having delusions. He steers her outside and the police pick her up.
But pretty soon Paul sees a man who looks and is dressed just like him. He chases the doppelganger and we are told that the alternate universe is out there somewhere waiting to displace us.
So this is another episode with people yelling hysterically. For me that’s a bad sign. It must be the cold war hysteria thing that made these things popular. But I didn’t buy into it. C+
Obviously our mileage differs but I love the hysteria. I don’t think a “Twilight Zone” is complete without someone shouting “Who am I?” Or “Where am I?” Or, my personal fav, “Is this some kind of a joke?” I’ll tell you on thing: if you think the hysteria in this or “Sky” is a bit much wait until you screen the upcoming “A World of Difference” or season three’s “Five Characters in Search of an Exit.” The characters in those episodes make the ones in “Sky” look like Ally Sheedy form “The Breakfast Club.”
I guess Mr. Serling will be, if not spinning, then possibly squirming a little in his grave during this labor of love I’m performing. But tastes must differ and I more enjoy his less frantic teleplays. And there are plenty of those. The comic ones are more to my taste. And even the sentimental ones can be good. I think the dialog is the critical point for me. If it lacks interest then so do I. But I have actually been encouraged by the episodes that I forgot about. There are some good ones to rediscover.
I don’t believe it was just Cold War hysteria. Hollywood seemed to be going through a silly period then. Lots of hysteria, lots of anger. “12 Angry Men” was filmed in this period. So was “To Kill A Mockingbird”, “The Birds”, “Night Of The Living Dead” and so on. They left film noir and didn’t know where to go, so they went for anger and hysteria.
I think they believed that using method acting meant they could dispense with scripts. I remember reading an article about the filming of the Marathon Man. Dustin Hoffman described how he used physical discomfort to help him get the most out of his performance in the dentist office scene. When they asked Laurence Olivier what he thought of that he said something like, “Yes, or you could just act.”
Haha! Good for Sir Laurence. Classic comeback.
Yeah, he considered it a craft not a priesthood.